This was the end of a playoff dream, in a terrible loss to a team that had been 0-8.

Haden had just given up a game-losing touchdown pass to Cecil Shorts III. The 20-yard play with 40 seconds left turned a 28-25 Browns lead into a 32-28 Jacksonville victory.

Someone asked Haden a question about the defense giving up a critical, 80-yard drive on the heels of a 95-yard touchdown play by Browns wideout Josh Gordon.

It set off Haden.

"You always come with the defensive stuff, man," he said, animated. "We're doing a good job. They scored on me at the end of the game.

"I'm just saying. It's nothing like that. We make plays when we do, and they did their thing. You know what I'm saying? Things happen, boss."

A crowd had gathered at Haden's locker stall in the grim Browns locker room. Someone else asked him to gauge the team mood now that a 1-6 skid has left season record at 4-8.

"I don't know, man. I don't know," Haden said.

He was getting more animated.

"I just (expletive) can't stand losing," he went on. "It hurts. I go out there, put my (expletive) heart out there every time. Every time. And ... you know what I'm saying? And we end up coming up short.

"From our D ... It was my fault there on the touchdown. He ran a good route, good play, good offense.

"I don't take nothin' from our D. We'll be out there every time. Grinding. Fighting. And it hurts."

His thoughts were scattering. He was fighting to stay composed.

"Every time we start losing ... you know what I'm saying?" he said. "It's just ... we're tired of it, and there's nothing we can say.

"You're going to come with the same questions every week. And we give you the same answers. 'We're going to get better next week. We're going to get better next week.'

With that, Haden walked out of the locker room, down a long hallway, and out of the stadium, alone.

Shorts was in a completely different place.

"It's a dream come true," said the former Cleveland Collinwood High School and Mount Union star. "For that play to happen in this game, in that situation ... my hometown."

Shorts admitted he was too jacked up at first, trying to impress more than 200 family and friends, including his parents and six siblings.

"I was running before I caught the ball," he said. "The drops were frustrating."

The game boiled down to a third-and-9 from the Cleveland 20, with 45 seconds left and the Browns leading by a field goal.

Haden had been covering Shorts the entire game.

"They were expecting the slant," Shorts said. "I did what we call a slide step ... I made a slide step out.

"We know Joe likes to jump routes. In our previous game, we ran a lot of lot of slants, a lot of unders, a lot of in-cutting routes.

"So, we expected him to jump it. And he jumped."

After a wide-open Shorts caught the ball in the end zone near the Jaguars' tunnel, he soaked in the moment while getting mobbed. Not only were the Browns the team of his youth, they were a team that had passed him by in the 2011 draft. The Jaguars wound up with a fourth-round steal.

"I was just staring at the crowd," Shorts said. "I ain't gonna tell you what I said."

Shorts made many big catches for Mount Union, and he is a rising star on a team that has won three of its last four games.

He made innumerable big plays for Collinwood and Mount Union, but this was one that beat his hometown NFL team.